


The 'Free Lieutenant McGraw' Campaign

by shirogiku



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, Feverish Love Confessions, London, M/M, Multi, One Windmill At A Time, Pre-Season/Series 01, Pre-Series, The Wonders Of Eighteenth-Century Medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6501574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirogiku/pseuds/shirogiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of the windmills that Thomas fights are those of James's mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The 'Free Lieutenant McGraw' Campaign

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Char7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Char7/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Char7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Char7/pseuds/Char7) in the [pirate_prompts_2016](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/pirate_prompts_2016) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> James falls ill. Thomas cares for him. A feverish love confession.
> 
>  **A/N:** I'm not sure where this fits on their timeline, so let's say it's set vaguely after their first kiss but before they are shown being cute and happy in James's room. 
> 
> The prompt has completely run away with me, OP, and there is a lot of Miranda because I can't leave her out, I hope it's OK.

Questions, practical advice, well-informed and aptly put, if cynical argument on politics and human nature - Thomas had come to expect many things from James, but silence wasn’t one of them. Even when James thought that he was being circumspect, his eyes spoke volumes.

As Thomas paused with his hand raised to knock, a dozen uneasy premonitions began to vie for his attention. As Miranda always said, everybody should have some room to breathe, but it was also she who had ultimately dispatched him on this mission, after one wasted afternoon after another of being unable to concentrate on anything else.

“You know how proud he is, bless him,” she had said. “He wouldn’t let us see him with a bloody nose and his feathers ruffled.”

But at the close of the week Thomas’s suspicions went from another barroom brawl - and yes, the word _had_ reached them, albeit with a delay - to a full-blown duel. So those hypothetical battle wounds of his required medical attention, and also a good explanation.

The door was made of dark wood - and by the looks of it, to withstand a siege. Not that Thomas was seriously considering it: the landlady must have a spare key... for all the good it would do him against the bolts on the inside. It was _terribly_ inconvenient when your chief tactical mastermind was the one you had to coax out of hiding.

Feeling more and more like a schoolboy, Thomas attempted to listen in. What he did hear was a lone, rasping cough, tightening the knot of worry in his stomach.

“James?” He pulled himself upright. “James, open up!” He brought down his fist with a little more force than originally intended. “If you carry on in this fashion, I shall have to... set up camp right here, and protest _most_ loudly and vehemently against your improper conduct.”

For a while, there were no further signs of life beyond some indistinct shuffling. He expanded on his newest campaign, outlining his agenda. His motto would be short, simple and to the point: ‘ _Free Lieutenant McGraw (from His Awful Lodgings)!_ ’, and he was fully prepared to have some pamphlets printed.

“James,” he implored, “have you no compassion for-?”

The door opened just enough to give him a glimpse of his beloved’s face, which looked _terrible_.

“Go home, Thomas,” James forced out, on the verge of another coughing fit. “You shouldn’t be here while I’m-” The cough overcame him again.

“If I had a penny for every time I heard a variation on that theme...” Thomas covered his mouth with his handkerchief, Miranda’s perfume lending him her confidence before he could be shut out. “I would just have enough funds for those pamphlets.”

Miranda had warned him about James’s Spartan ways, but the room felt even chillier and more inhospitable than he had imagined.

His campaign had just officially become a matter of life and death. “ _Neither_ of us should be here, my dear. Which is to say, I am taking you home with me, and I will hear no more protests.” He threw James’s wardrobe open, half-expecting to find it filled with some macabre Naval implements.

James called him absurd, but that was old news.

Lieutenant McGraw owned the right and proper clothing for every season and occasion, keeping it in perfect repair, but Indulgence was yet to discover his address. One more thing to remedy, that.

“I must insist-”

“Your body has already made its case, and far more convincingly than you can manage right now.” James’s answering glare could have physically removed his hand from James’s forehead. “Come now, if you have the strength to oppose my intervention, you’ll be able to get down to my carriage. And rest assured, the alternative is _not_ my retreat. It is a full squadron of nurses, doctors and whatever force necessary to make this room fit for human habitation.” He beamed at his partner. “So, which will it be?”

James’s frown deepened. “It’s just a cold.” His words were punctuated by coughs each more painful than the last one.

Need he remind James that left untreated, _any_ cold was a pulmonary disease waiting to happen? And the longer he waited, the greater the risk. “I’m afraid to ask how you cure colds in the Navy.” He spied a poorly concealed bottle of rum. “Oh, right.” It was nearly empty, too.

McGraw’s indignation cracked, revealing a dogged, misguided determination to suffer in solitude.

“Well, your medicine has failed you.” He brushed James’s sweat-matted hair back from his face, smiling at him with soft encouragement that belied the implicit rebuke. “Shall we try it my way, then?”

James did not, or could not look away, which must be a good sign. “I didn’t want you to catch the same ailment, that’s all.” He repeated that it was nothing that he hadn’t dealt with before.

“My dear, I daresay you are in no danger of turning me into a hardened ascetic like yourself.” He liked his creature comforts a little too much for that to happen. “In fact, my hope is rather to achieve the opposite.”

The hardened ascet blinked at his lack of subtlety, but the outcome had already been decided. Thomas was not unaccustomed to helping another man into his clothing in a rush, but this would have been a poor setup for that conversation. What they shared was new and delicate and precious, and Thomas worried about casting more shadows over it more than he let on.

But this, this downright _criminal_ neglect of oneself, he could not abide by.

Outside, the transformation was nothing short of dramatic. He could practically hear James’s back snapping back to its usual ramrod straightness. He did not cough once until they were on their way, but then he folded in on himself all at once, facing away from Thomas, who would have none of that.

“Your stubbornness shall be my undoing,” James mouthed.

If you asked Miranda, they were entirely worth each other, and she was always right.

 

* * *

 

If it had been up to Thomas, he would have installed James in his own chambers, but _some_ decorum had to be observed. So let it be the least opulent room in the house - James still managed to clash with the decor, baffling the physician all the while.

“You have fought so valiantly for our home, it is only fair that you should find a safe haven here,” Miranda murmured, her worry a mirror twin of Thomas’s, but much more artfully concealed.

James looked up at the ceiling, painted with a scene of a hunt. Come to think of it, Thomas did not like that painting either.

True to themselves, he and Miranda had their own ideas about caring for such a difficult patient. Bleedings and purgings left them ill at ease and were unanimously voted out. Warm milk was attempted, on the suggestion from their maids and paired with the obligatory restorative broths. Miranda personally brewed an infusion of balm and citrus, a French recipe. Thomas paid a visit to an apothecary and returned with a parcel of syrups and electuaries to supply an entire hospital, as Miranda did not hesitate to point out.

“I wouldn’t want to try any of those concoctions either,” he overheard her whisper in strict confidence, spoon-feeding the much put-upon patient - their new favourite family pastime. ”Don’t you tell Thomas, though, he is too proud of them. That being said, did you _have_ to pour it out into that poor plant?”

To be fair, the plant remained hearty and hale, so there must be something to the wonders of the modern medicine.

“On the subject of wonders,” Thomas informed Miranda peevishly, “in the Navy, they cure _all_ sickness with drunkenness.”

She rubbed his shoulders, taking the edge off his restless mood. “One windmill at a time, my brave hidalgo.”

He tipped back his head. She did always know his mind, often before he himself knew it. Without her, he wouldn’t be half as brave.

“James wouldn’t say a word against his service, but is it not its harshness that drives men to the margins of society and ultimately outside it?”

It was not a fully-fledged idea, not yet, just a sinking feeling that he got whenever James skirted around certain difficult questions. Such as: where _did_ the descent from hope to hopelessness begin?

Miranda pursed her lips. “Well, if you must, at least wait until he’s fully recovered.”

Thomas kissed her palm. “I do wish we had brought him here immediately, instead of wasting a whole week on idle speculation.”

“Oh darling, shall I tell you a story?” It sounded like it would be an allegory. “A bright young architect was commissioned to rebuild a remote and half-forgotten wing of a sprawling grand palace. He had a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve and it did not look half-bad on paper, but the journey from paper to marble turned out to be far longer and trickier than he anticipated. First, he found faults in the hallway into which it opened. Next came the gallery and the verandah. He strayed deeper and deeper in, until he was ready to tear the whole house down because of all that room for improvement. At which point, he was reminded by those closest to him that rebuilding a wing with the means at his disposal would be an achievement, while such relentless pursuit of flaws is a quest without end.”

“Write a play about it!” he suggested in amusement.

“Pah, it is neither comical nor tragic enough.

James seemed to benefit from the change, but only initially: his fever returned with a vengeance. With sweat and shivers for his constant companions, the lines of his face stood out sharper, ageing him by years, and his gaze kept wandering out to sea. Thomas dreaded seeing blood on his shirt.

James dreaded his tender touch. 

He and Miranda took turns by James’s bedside, now reading to him, now forbidding him to so much as think of work. The Navy was the mother and father to him, but Thomas had little patience for parental figures that could not spare a thought for their ailing son.

James’s fingers clutched at the bed sheets like those of a drowning man. “Thomas, I… have set back our progress.”

He smiled wryly, wondering at himself for having expected what, a feverish love confession? He and his notions, as Miranda would say.

He closed the book and got up to refresh the cloth on James’s brow. “I do realise you have not been much cared for, and it pains me how ill-used you are to gentle care. All I ask of you is please stop rejecting it! For no other reason than being so dear to us. Nothing else could possibly matter until you are back on your feet, and politics and your Admiralty can go hang themselves!”

James’s eyes were wide-open, and so, so vulnerable. Thomas squeezed his hand reassuringly, unsure what else to say. Had it been too much? 

Faced with a choice between his dreams and ambitions and his loved ones, of course he would always choose their well-being, but would James judge him for that? Question his dedication to their joint project?

James opened his mouth... and asked for water, Thomas failing to locate the jug.

“You make an attractive nurse, if a somewhat scatterbrained one,” Miranda teased, stepping in. “James, do hurry up and defeat that dreadful cold of yours! The wonder of Thomas at his fussiest is best savoured in limited doses.”

He huffed. She needed her beauty sleep, the deserter. But he himself became an intruder as James lost all coherence, tossing and turning and arguing with the people inside his own head. But at least he wasn’t alone.

Somewhere in there, Thomas caught the word ‘love’ - this time, not a product of his imagination. Unless James was confessing to cough syrups, of course, a deep, dark and wholly unacknowledged passion.

“Bloody hell, I  _ do  _ love him!” James spat out, giving Thomas another start. “And it’s not some dark place, my love for him. It is light and beauty and everything good and pure in the world. Why can’t you fucking see that?”

Thomas kissed James’s rough knuckles. “Hurry back to me, my love, so you can say this properly.”

James’s eyes fell closed, his breathing evening out. As it happened, the fever finally broke for good, and James bounded towards a full recovery in astonishing leaps.

So astonishing that Thomas caught him  _ sneaking out _ , and the fugitive was finally fit to be rebuffed for his careless conduct.

“Forgive me,” James replied in a level tone, all of his buttons done all the way up to the crown of his head, it seemed. “It will not happen again.”

“It is not  _ us  _ you have wronged.” James was taken aback. “It is you yourself.” Thomas put his arm around his shoulders, pleased that the Lieutenant did not try and pull away. “However, I shan’t press you any further after you clarify one more thing for me.”

“Which is?”

“What  _ were  _ you fleeing from just now? My campaign for better living conditions for you, the things you may or may not have said in the throes of fever, or my cough syrups?”

James looked him square in the eye. “ _Yes_.”

Thomas chuckled. “Touche. How would you like a lozenge? I have it on good authority that they are the best for-”

James rewarded him with a long-suffering kiss. 

“Campaigning for better things, I can overlook,” he whispered. “But you, you make me  _ wish  _ for them. You make your dreams and hopes  _ my  _ dreams and hopes, and by God, does it frighten me.”

Thomas cupped his cheek and touched their foreheads together to smooth out those worry-lines. “It takes courage to fight demons in broad daylight. But the greatest courage is facing them when you are alone in the dark, day after day. I cannot admire you more for it, James.”

In James’s eyes, he read the same feverish confession, and in that moment, nothing could have made him so perfectly happy.

In his study, his copy of _The London Spy Compleat_ lay open at:

“ _I could not forbear Reflecting on the Prudence of those Persons who send their Unlucky Children to Sea to Tame and Reform 'em, which, I am well satisfied, is like sending a Knave into Scotland to learn Honesty,_ _a Fool into Ireland to learn Wit; or a Clown into Holland to learn Breeding; by any of which Measures they that send 'em may be sure that instead of mending the ill Habits they have contracted, the first will return more Wild, the second more Knavish, the third more Foolish, and the fourth a greater Booby_.”

**Author's Note:**

> The quote at the end is from Ned Ward's _The London Spy Compleat_ (1700). His work has been called 'jovial, brutal, vulgar, graphic', but more recent take is that he wrote 'sincere social criticism and concerns for the marginal people of London society', so it seems like something Thomas might have taken interest in at some point to understand the sides of London closed to him by birth. It is VERY scathing on the subject of the Navy.
> 
> More [here](http://grubstreetproject.net/works/T119938).


End file.
